


Ocularum

by thebananahasspoken



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Budding Romance, Eventual Smut, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Frans - Freeform, Multi, Tobacco use, Troubled Past, alcohol use, alternate universe though photographs, another of mercy-monster's creations, eventual poly - Freeform, felltale universe, frisk fell as an adult, photosphere, so brace yourself for that, that i just stole and modded to my own desires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:01:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26619379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebananahasspoken/pseuds/thebananahasspoken
Summary: The party was still in full swing on the first floor of the large house, the glow of the lights visible against the wall at the end of the hall, but Frisk, after considering rejoining it, let her eyes wander again to the photograph in her hands, slightly wrinkled from their rendezvous and more than a little wind whipped; in the pale glow of the porch light shining from behind her, through the sliding glass doors, the picture was illuminated, though poorly, well enough to see…And what it had captured was not in the least what she had anticipated.There he was again, the other skeleton that looked just like Sans but so clearly wasn’t. In this photo, though, the stranger stood against a backdrop of monochrome ice, alone despite her former presence in the picture, and looked indescribably sad, any trace of a smile completely absent from his damaged face.He looked… desperate, and in incredible pain. Her heart ached at the sight, even as it soared at the discovery, her own strange absence from the photograph completely forgotten in the face of this breakthrough.
Relationships: Frisk/Sans (Felltale), Frisk/Sans (Undertale)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 32





	Ocularum

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Copper and Steel, Felltale designs](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/689467) by Mercy-monster. 



> Heya folks <3 I'm not reallllllly starting a new fic, this is one I've had planned for awhile, and the first chapter is just a oneshot I did for my good friend Mercy-monster way long ago. I have since come up with an entire storyline for it, though, and wanted a place to put it all ^^ so here we are.
> 
> This is a story and universe that I based on a picture Mercy did (https://mercy-monster.tumblr.com/post/174729807187/copper-and-steel-based-on-an-old-fell-sans). I promise there'll be more about the actual different universe in future chapters~ just the basic setup here. You can also come over to my Tumblr if you wanna ask more specific questions!
> 
> My blog, for various Undertale shenanigans (18+):  
> https://uhhbananafrappe.tumblr.com/
> 
> Mercy-monster's blog, cuz she's so awesome:  
> https://mercy-monster.tumblr.com/

* * *

“Getting some air?”

To Sans’ credit, he didn’t jump at Frisk’s sudden appearance, or her question; he only shot her a sideways glance over his shoulder, cool and casual as he always was, and nodded to her as he let out a stream of cigarette smoke into the frigid air, leaning against the railing of his balcony on his elbows with one bony ankle crossed over the other, slipper bobbing in the icy wind.

Of course, it was nearly impossible to sneak up on the surprisingly observant monster, even during one of his naps. The only time she’d succeeded had been a complete accident, a hand on his shoulder to get his attention while he’d been reading a surprisingly thick book written in what looked like pictograph, and she’d been trying to get again ever since.

How could she not? The look on his face had been hilarious.

Nevertheless, the only real reaction she got was a knowing smile, replacing the flat despondency that had reigned over his expression only a moment before, and a shrug of his broad shoulders as he turned back to his perusal of the winterlocked forest and the march of the glowing lanterns leading off into it, marking where the road traveled to the river rushing just out of sight.

His cigarette returned to its place between his teeth, another sign that he was attempting to relieve some sort of stress (he only smoked when he was getting overwhelmed by something, and only where his brother would never know), a thin stream of smoke blowing away from its smoldering tip and towards the moss strewn cavern roof far above.

“yeah. it was getting crowded down there, felt like getting some cancer instead,” he explained dryly, the hood of his jacket waving in the stiff wind, as though beckoning her closer; Frisk let out a giggle at the joke, shaking her head, then nervously fiddled with the camera slung around her neck for a moment, flicking at the rainbow sticker that was coming loose and gliding a forefinger along the glossy, slightly scratched plastic… before clearing her throat and taking another step away from the sliding glass door behind her, towards Sans’ turned, but not unwelcoming, back.

She really didn’t know how he did it. Even when he was like this, it was so easy to be around him.

“Mmm. ...mind if I join you?” she queried, smiling hopefully at the back of his rounded skull (she didn’t know why she’d bothered to ask… he’d never turned down her company before), and, as expected, Sans let out a quiet huff, his head dropping slightly as he shook it in his muted mirth, and straightened slightly to scoot over a foot, reaching out a hand to pat the spot on the railing directly beside him indicatively, bare of snow from his own elbows.

“you know i don’t. pull up some rail,” he chuckled, throwing her another sidelong look (his gaze lingered on her for an extended moment, longer than a simple glance could explain away, and it made her heart race in her chest, her cheeks pinking slightly), and Frisk, bouncing on the toes of her shoes for a moment in happiness, accepted the offer and strode over to join him immediately,propping her palms on the weathered wood and leaning her abdomen against the railing, craning out over the side of the house to watch the snowflakes wheeling past the other homes on the road, illuminated golden and serene against their windows in the falling night.

She sighed happily, curling her fingers and smiling ecstatically at the wonder, the _magic_ , of this place (it was everywhere, in everything, beneath the mountain, everything from the tiniest rock to the largest, oldest tree, in the water and the air and the earth and every single one of her friends, and it simply… amazed her), and even though she felt Sans’ gaze on her still, either wondering at her mood or, perhaps, the fact that she’d decided to come outside into a perpetual blizzard without a coat, she decided to simply bask in the majesty of the scenery.

She even snapped a few pictures, the polaroids rolling out from the slot obediently after each burst of light from the flash cube, and stowed them in the satchel strapped across her back after they’d developed (there was magic in the camera, too, she was sure of it, even though it was human made and had only fallen into the Underground from a landfill above… it took the best pictures she’d ever seen, they developed quickly regardless of light and time, and… a few other things she still wasn’t sure about), her gaze moving from the scenery and to one of the lower windows of the house she’d just exited as a swell of noise from the party below rose to the balcony, shadows dancing across the frosted window panes with merriment.

Gyftmas had a lot of the same traditions as Christmas above, short the symbolic Christian themes, but Papyrus had insisted that with its merriments came a party that would last all night, complete with “spiked” eggnog (she’d nearly snorted some out her nose when, instead of containing alcohol, it had come in a spiked punch bowl) and party games and Mettaton’s Gyftmas Special.

She didn’t mind the party, even though it wasn’t really her thing. It made the tall skeleton monster happy, as well as many of her other friends… and got her through an evening of anticipation before Sans found out what she’d gotten him for Gyftmas.

She hadn’t been able to get him the first thing she’d thought of (she flushed at the thought of it, the boldness and what his reaction might have been), considering how she always came out on film, but she hoped he enjoyed the box of prank necessities just as much as… as she’d hoped he’d enjoy the most daring thing she’d ever attempted.

That would have been something to give him in private anyway. She was almost glad it hadn’t worked, that, for some reason, all of her photos of herself were always smudgy and almost like she wasn’t in them at all.

“They sure are having a good time,” she observed fondly, folding her arms across her chest and above her camera as she did so (she should really call it Sans’ camera… it had been his, when she’d found it on that dusty old shelf in the storeroom, and even though he insisted he wanted her to have it, she was still extremely grateful) while, at the same moment, suppressing a shiver as another gust of wind buffeted her and bit at her exposed skin, and Sans, turning to set his back against the railing, tilted his skull and bobbed the smoking cigarette between his teeth idly, brows furrowed slightly as he looked her over astutely.

“were you not? looked like you were enjoying yourself from where i was napping,” he queried curiously, tapping a phalange against the banister while his opposite hand rose to pull his cigarette from his mouth, shaking away the ash at the same moment as he exhaled a cloud of light blue smoke, and though Frisk’s still rushing heart leaped at the thought that he had been watching her from across the room, sending tingles of warmth into the tips of her fingers and toes, she still, with a shrewd, bashful smile, shook her head, bending to lean her forearms against the railing before her.

“No… no, I was. Most fun I’ve had since my birthday. But as much as I love your brother and Undyne…” she insinuated, trailing off as she searched for a way to explain her presence out on his balcony, away from the merriment of the evening and the joy and laughter of their friends; she’d let her whims and heart get the best of her without even thinking, insomuch that she didn’t even have a decent excuse for being here.

Sans seemed to more than accept her weighted silence, however, nodding his head and letting out a muted chuckle; he indicated the glowing window of the living room below with a jab of his cigarette laden hand meaningfully, just as the silhouette of the aforementioned fish monster dashed in front of it with what appeared to be the dining room table held above her head, bellowing with laughter.

“i get it. bit much, especially when the furniture starts flying,” he filled in genially, expression understanding and humored; his smile was a slice of jest and teasing, silvery in the dimming glow of the crystals far above and so… drawing, and Frisk, all too aware of her far too admiring gaze, turned back to watching the snow laden vista with a heated blush decorating her cheeks and her lower lip held between her teeth, her brain advising her against the words that her speeding heart was screaming at her to say.

She had little hope against the love struck fool. She hadn’t thought right, or well, since the moment she’d known she was in love with Sans the skeleton.

“No. I wasn’t having as much fun after you left,” she whispered, a puff of icy fog leaving her lips and escaping into the brisk air of the winter’s evening, and though she had only breathed her true reasoning, barely a mutter in the growing shriek of the galing winds, she knew he had heard her, just from the way his shoulders stiffened from the corner of her eye… the way he turned his face towards her fully, expression more stunned than she’d seen it since the morning she’d accidentally snuck up on him.

She turned to look at him as well, leaning her hip against the banister and desperately fighting against the desire to be bashful when she was so close…closer than they’d ever been before (this… wasn’t the first time they’d flirted with the notion of _them_ , of more than friends, of what they really meant to each other), and Sans, after what seemed an eternity of watching her as the snowflakes whisked between them in whimsical flurries, let out a sigh carried on a gentle laugh, his smile softening and his posture loosening.

He reached out his free hand, ever so slowly, and tucked an errant, windblown lock of her bangs behind her ear, his touch lingering against her cheek just a little longer than it needed to. She didn’t resist leaning into his hand, her eyes fluttering closed and her lips parting slightly, and the skeletal monster, in turn, turned to face her fully, something more than humor shining in his magically lit and, while sometimes intense, gently glowing sockets.

“...well. sorry to’ve deprived you,” he replied in just as soft a murmur, stroking his thumb over her cheekbone and seeming to revel in the silky texture of her skin against his bones, and Frisk, a shuddering shiver and a quiet sigh of rapture shaking her body and her hands, opened her eyes to smile up at him fondly, reaching out to snatch his smoldering cigarette from his limp hand as she did so.

He raised a brow bone at the move, his smile quirking at one corner, but she only smiled back at him, head tilted smugly, and raised the cigarette to her lips, hopeful of it warming her just a little bit so she wouldn’t embarrass herself (any further, at least).

It wasn’t a habit that she indulged in much anymore, not after she’d fallen into the Underground and found her new life, her new friends and an entire world where she… truly belonged, but once, she’d smoked her way through two packs a day, saying nothing of the… other things she’d indulged in, things she wasn’t proud of and never would be.

It had been a miserable existence, Above.

Alone since she the age of 11, cast out from her foster home, determined to never return to her insane, abusive mother. She’d lived on the streets, and she’d done what she’d had to do to keep on living. No… she’d never hurt anyone. It wasn’t in her to do that. But she’d let people hurt her, let them use her so she could survive, and healed the memories with drugs and alcohol and anything that would dull the pain of another day in squalor and nothingness.

It was why she’d come to the mountain, in the end. High and lost in her own mediocrity, on the same road her mother had been despite her oaths to _never_ be like that woman… she hadn’t even made it to twenty-five, but as she’d looked into the chasm at her feet, she couldn’t fathom another way.

Magic had saved her. Magic, and golden flowers, and the kindest, most understanding and patient person she’d ever had the privilege of calling mother. Everything that had come after, the adventure and her promise to find a way to save these trapped, wonderful monsters and… her own personal love story, unfolding before her very eyes, had been possible because of her, and Frisk, repressing the tears physically building on her lashes, shook her head and took a deep, deep drag of the cigarette, thinking fondly of the trip she had planned to see Toriel the next day.

She and Asgore would be expecting her for tea and brunch, after all.

Exhaling the tobacco and nicotine heavy smoke through her nose, Frisk, raising her eyes to meet Sans’ gaze again, sent him a quick wink before taking one last drag and handing him back his cigarette with a flourish.

“I find my ways around it. Stealing your cigarettes and bothering you g-gets m-me b-by,” she informed him coyly, though another, harsher set of shivers shook her body so hard that it affected even her words this time, and the skeletal monster, with a deep sigh and a stern look, took his cigarette back, stubbed it out in the ashtray set beside him on the railing, and shrugged out of his jacket, throwing it over her head as soon as he’d slipped his arms out of it.

He chuckled as she fought with it, far larger than her more slim build and seeming to almost have a life of its own, but eventually she got the fluffy, thick coat turned around and slipped over her arms, hugging the material close to her with just the tips of her fingers poking out from the ends of the sleeves.

It smelled just like him, his hot dog stand and Grillby’s and magic and bone and the barest hint of the spearmint toothpaste he’d spilled on it that morning. She never wanted to give it back.

Sans watched her snuggle deeper into his jacket with an odd, admiring cant to his smile, his sockets warm with their watchful approval, before he let out a snort of laughter through his nasal cavity, soft and amused, as he reached out and pulled the hood over her head, mussing her hair and blocking her vision with the material.

“looks awful on you. blue is _not_ your color,” he snickered, leaning a sweater clad arm back against the railing beside him as he watched her struggle to clear her vision, and once she’d recovered from the monster’s trickery, brushing her short locks of hair out of her eyes and pushing the hood back far enough to peek out at him, she poked the tip of her tongue out at him, zipping the jacket up resolutely and meaningfully.

“I have to disagree. I happen to think I look perfect in blue,” she insinuated, smiling coyly and toying with the end of the zipper, hoping against hope that he would understand her admittedly a little innocuous flirtation; she’d thought herself very clever, as it had sprung to mind, but upon saying it, realized that he could infer that she just… thought she looked good in the color.

Stupid… she wished she was as bold as some of her thoughts. Maybe then she wouldn’t have to dance around what she really meant… could tell him what she really wanted.

It seemed, though, that she had underestimated him, and that her turn of phrase hadn’t gone unnoticed; his smile slipped a little, the gentle mocking playing around it’s edge fading into understanding and no small amount of consideration, and he was quiet for a moment, looking over what he could see of her framed face in the silence of the blanketed winter about them.

It was almost serene, but for the nervous beat of her heart and the shaking of her hands, fingers laced together before her… perfect as a picture, should she not have been a part of it.

He finally broke the silence with a hum, under his breath and rumbling through his rib cage like distant thunder; his gaze was just as portentous, holding her own with a gravity and a heat that instantly brought a flush to her cheeks, vaporizing the snowflakes clinging to her face.

“...maybe you should wear it more often,” he suggested with just as much innuendo as she had used, pushing himself away from the banister and shuffling a step closer; where he stopped, only an arm’s length away, was a clear invitation, his intense, drawing stare a beckoning that she simply couldn’t ignore, and the step she took, up to his chest, their bodies only a breath away, felt like inevitability, like something that had been meant to be for longer than she had been alive.

She couldn’t have kept from reaching out, plucking at the corded knit of his ivory sweater’s sleeve and, ever so carefully, threading her fingers between his, if she’d tried, and the feeling of him squeezing her hand, sliding his phalanges more fully into her grasp and tightening their bond, was a rush she had never felt before.

She couldn’t even feel the cold anymore, and it had nothing to do with the coat she had commandeered.

She met his gaze shyly, under her eyelashes and so hesitant she felt like a teenage virgin again, tracing the ridges and shapes of the bone of his hand under her fingertips in sheer fascination and greed, not wanting to miss a moment of this opportunity that she had been given.

She didn’t know when she’d be brave enough to try this again, and… thus far at least… he’d never made the first move. Maybe he was being a gentleman (gentlemonster?). Maybe it was something else. She didn’t know, but… sometimes… she really wished she knew what the inscrutable monster was thinking and feeling, outside of these rare soirees.

It was as confusing as it was frustrating, but at least she had these small, stolen moments… the glimpse of more that they could possibly be.

“I will if you’ll let me,” she murmured, tracing her thumb over the back of his hand and giving him a tiny, hopeful smile, and he met it with his own, gentle and easy and charming her to the ends of her toes, before his smile grew in the realization of some inward hilarity, leaning a hip against the railing beside him and swinging their hands in the frigid air almost in time with the manifestation of his laughter.

“heh… when did you start asking my permission for anything?” he wondered aloud, sending her a meaningful, crooked grin, and though Frisk huffed for a moment, pouting out her lower lip and narrowing her eyes at the snickering monster (he only half shrugged and winked to show he was teasing, unmoved by her obviously faux temper), she had to admit that he was right.

She’d lived alone for so long that she just… kind of did a lot of things on her own. It made her come off just a little more officious than she wanted to, so she tried to moderate her tendency to just move things along at her own speed, but thankfully, Sans had never been bothered by her independence… or her frustrating inconsistency in being able to do the same with their blooming relationship.

She desperately wished this, them, was as easy as coordinating the store she worked at in the small village, or directing the cleanup of the village’s outskirts had been. She was trying, but gods, did she stumble all over her uncertainty more than she wanted to.

With an acquiescent sigh and a deflation of her rigid, slightly offended posture, Frisk, with a last squeeze of his hand in her palm, freed her fingers to fumble with her camera, lifting it on its strap to indicate its presence and her intent.

“Fair point… fine. While we’re at it-” she started hopefully, flipping up the flash strip and smiling as winningly as she could manage, but Sans, smile immediately fleeing his face and receptive demeanor flattening into hard denial, took a step back and turned away, scowling and glaring at the frozen siding on the side of the house.

“ _no_ ,” he snapped, shoving his hands into his shorts’ pocket with obvious finality, and Frisk, optimistic grin fading away from her lips, felt her shoulders droop and her heart shrink in her chest, the annoyance and ire in that one word like a slap to the face.

He’d never let her take a picture of him, not during her adventure, her time living in the village of Snowdin… during their growing romance. He avoided pictures among the monsters too, always finding some excuse or escape route to get away… and he had never explained why. He only shrugged, made some photography related pun, and then either changed the subject or left the scene entirely.

She desperately wanted to know why, especially after finding the photo albums he had hidden in one of his closets and seeing some… very odd things within (he didn’t look like himself, in most of the pictures, and neither did his brother, or most of the monsters, for that matter; they all looked… so sad, despite the oddly wicked grins or furious scowls they all bore), and so, for the first time, she didn’t let it go.

She didn’t put down her camera and let him hide whatever it was that bothered him so much about pictures… she took the step he had retreated herself, and put a hand on his arm, the cable knit of his sweater under her hand dewy with melting snowflakes. He twitched, at her touch, and turned his head just enough to glance at her from the corner of one socket.

He looked more unreceptive and cool than she’d ever seen him, his gaze steely and his frown off putting, but Frisk pressed on nevertheless, her soul flaring to urge her on determinately.

There was something to his denials. There had to be, and the mystery of it all was driving her insane. She needed to know. It felt… big. Important. World changing, and like it was only a breath away.

“Why not? It’s just a picture…” she pressed, curling her fingers into the thick material of his sweater, and his gaze hardened a fraction more, almost as angry as the versions of him in those old, old photos. He was stonily silent for a long moment, so long that she thought he might’ve just decided to ignore her; all he did was stare, almost as though he were sizing her up. Then, the long quiet broke with a tsk of his hidden tongue (she knew he had one, she’d seen him eating ice cream before, and it was as magical as it was inhuman, something that the contemplation of never failed to bring a flush to her cheeks), his gaze moving away to burn holes in the metal siding of his home once again.

His shoulders were so stiff… his whole body was unmoving, clearly uncomfortable. Maybe she was pushing too far...

“it’s a long story. just- the less pictures there are of me, the better,” he insisted in a gruff grunt, his jaw gritting in obvious tension, and Frisk, loosening her grasp on his sleeve, let her posture droop, her forehead falling against his shoulder and her eyes squeezing shut. She felt him still, after her motion, the rise and fall of his ribcage ceasing and the grinding of his teeth halting entirely, and let out a tremulous, haltering sigh, her hands circling his arm to hug him closer to her.

She wished she were trying to be manipulative. She’d never been able to do things like that, even when it would have benefited her Above; it just wasn’t in her to consider. No… all she felt right now was guilt, terrible guilt for pushing him and ruining their quiet moment.

Her lowered posture, the near craving to hold him closer… it stemmed from an ache in her chest she sometimes felt around the monster, when he showed the depth of the depression she knew he suffered from, when he disappeared from home all evening only to show up on her couch at three in the morning drunk, when his jokes fell flat and revealed far too much…

When his mask slipped, and showed the things he tried desperately to hide from the rest of the world.

It hurt her more than anyone else’s suffering ever had, even her own, and lingered in her mind almost constantly, assuaging his pain and helping the person that never asked and making the monster she loved happy one of her foremost goals in her life.

It was why she’d told him he was welcome in her small home those months ago, anytime he needed, so he wouldn’t feel guilty about his brother seeing him at his lowest. It was why she had followed him out here in the first place, noticing his absence from the party and feeling the pull to comfort him. It was why she hugged his arm closer to her chest now, burying her face in his sweater and burning with empathy for the secrets he was guarding, so fiercely that he had descended to something she had never seen before from him… anger.

She wished he didn’t have to hide. That he could share with her, and let some of his disguised anguish go. But this, feeling some of the stiffness melt from his form the longer she lingered, feeling one of his hands rise to lay on her forearm, feeling his own head sag to the side to rest against hers, was enough. More than enough.

It felt like closure, and forgiveness, and peace, and that was all she needed from him.

She sniffled quietly, willing the tears gathering along her lashes away (she didn’t want to cry on his sweater, she was wearing makeup and it was stained enough without her help), and cleared her throat as quietly as she could manage, fingertips smoothing across the corded yarn in her grasp.

“Please, Sans? I just want one of us together. I know you don’t like them… you don’t have to tell me why… but just this once. ...just for me. No one else will ever see it, I promise,” she whispered, her voice cracking and her body shivering, no longer cold but overflowing with emotion, and though he fell still again, her hand on her arm clenching slightly and his spine tightening, she lifted her head and laid her chin on his shoulder, meeting his dubious, still hardened sideways gaze with her watery, beseeching own.

“For Gyftmas. It’s… all I want,” she pled humbly, holding his judging glare unflinchingly, and though she could taste the lie on her tongue (that was far from all that she wanted, but… it was too soon for what she really wanted, and they both knew that), could see his knowledge of it in the flinty flecks of magic in his sockets… he only remained resolute a moment longer before he crumbled, his gaze softening and his frown, so out of place on his face, fading into a wry smile.

“you know, that’s not gonna work every time. the puppy dog eye thing. i work with dogs, i’m used to it.”

He turned in her grasp, loosening her hold on his arm with gentle hands, but only enfolded her in his own the next moment, hugging her close and settling his head against hers again, and though she wanted to laugh at his statement, her tears freezing on her cheeks as they finally escaped her control and a reply on the tip of her tongue… she only hugged him back, shifting her camera out of the way so she could only be closer to him and glorying in the mended moment of solitude and burgeoning meaning.

The last thing she wanted was to waste this, miss a _second_ of his embrace or the gentle path of his hands over her back or the feeling of his soul, so close but so far, beating almost in perfect time with her own heart.

Time seemed to cease, outside of their interlude; the cold was a far away nuisance, the noise of the party falling to the wayside and the coming of night escaping their notice. All they knew was the gentle sway of each other’s bodies, the feeling of his phalanges stroking her spine and her own clenched in his sweater, and when they finally parted, lingering far closer than they had before (she could feel his breath, from the few inches they had stepped apart, feel the weight of his gaze and the layered meaning in the lingering touch of his hand… it was scrambling her mind a little, and she had a feeling her own close presence was doing the same to him), another moment of quiet stretched, though far more comfortable and easy than the shattered tension of before.

Frisk broke it with the laughter that had been momentarily forgotten, though, leaning against the monster with a cordial and teasing nudge of her shoulder, the mental image of Doggo and Greater Dog begging for scraps from his stalls too much to forestall her commenting on the comparison any longer.

“Well, is it working this time?” she giggled, flushed with the returning chill of the air and the trace of his hand along her arm to recapture her hand in his again, and Sans, his soft smile twisting at one corner, raised his hand to brush a disturbed lock of her hair from her forehead, curling it around his forefinger lingeringly as he did.

“yeah. just warning you to use a different tactic next time you’re trying to weasel something out of me,” he relented, rubbing his captured lock of hair between his fingers for a moment, almost as though wondering at it’s texture, and though she spluttered at his accusation, rising to the bait in an attempt to defend herself, he cut her off with a wink and a grin, evidencing his teasing. “now are you gonna take that picture or not? i’d much rather keep marveling at how beautiful you are, but i think our feet are freezing to the deck.”

She nearly dropped the camera, her hands faltering and her fingers freezing into place as she shrugged the strap over her head; she barely caught it, hugging the precious item to her chest in momentary panic, before turning her gaze to the monster at her side, meeting his matter of fact gaze with shock and flattered breathlessness.

He said nothing, only turning to throw his arm over her shoulders and tapping his now freed forefinger on the flash strip of the camera with a sly, knowing glint in his sockets, and Frisk, flabbergasted and absolutely thrown for a loop (he thought… did he really think she was…), did the only thing she could think of to do in that moment.

She lifted the camera, turned to capture the both of them, and, in a surge of inspiration, rose to her toes and brushed the whisper of a kiss to his cheekbone just as she took the picture, capturing her mischief as well as his own now stunned expression on the polaroid.

Shaking the picture that had rolled from the slot through the frigid air in an attempt to develop it more quickly, Frisk slung her camera back around her neck, pleased as punch, and shot the ostentatiously silent skeleton beside her an impish smirk, unmoved from beneath his arm and perfectly comfortable there.

“Is that a better tactic?” she teased, reaching out to brush a drift of snow accumulating on his shoulder away busily, and Sans, at last breaking from his apparent existential crisis, blinked and looked back at her with… near awe, as though he’d never seen anything like her before in his life, and an intensity that shook her to her core.

She flushed, under that look, her heart stuttering in her chest and her smirk wavering, and Sans, the arm around her shoulders pulling her closer and his free hand rising to thread into her hair (it was all she could do not to let her eyes flutter at the feeling, her blush only brightening more), seemed to consider her for a long, long moment… a consideration that seared her to the bone and heated her blood and made her knees weak.

His gaze flicked to her lips, parted in her distraction, and then back to her widened eyes, a cloud of icy fog leaving his mouth on the dregs of a heavy, haltering exhalation.

“...maybe better than you want it to be. i’d, uh… think of something else. something that might not make me want to be way too greedy,” he whispered on the breath of a shaky laugh, the hand he had run into her hair stroking down her neck and eliciting an entirely different kind of shiver from her body; she could only stare up at him, lost in the quiet, weighted moment and, more than once, glancing down at his own bony mouth, before, with a tongue run over her dry lips, she leapt, her heart racing a million miles an hour in her chest as she did.

“And if that’s how I want it?” she encouraged, shuffling half a step closer, and within his sockets, Sans’ gaze constricted, his jaw parting and his hands, almost instinctively, pulling her closer.

She couldn’t breathe, as he leaned down, his hand at the base of her skull tilting her face up, to accommodate him; all she could see and feel was him, every nerve ending in her body aflame and her every thought of the distance between them, slowly but surely disappearing more by the second-

And when he hovered a bare inch from her lips, their breath mixing in portentous avowal… she felt that she could have fainted.

But he moved no closer. He didn’t close the distance, didn’t take what she was begging him to, and instead turned her head so that his bony lips pressed to the shell of her ear instead, the whisper of them moving against her flesh turning her bones to jelly, the fingers of her free hand clenching in the front of his sweater and her eyes wide and searching as he spoke, so quiet but, in that moment, bearing the gravity of a thunderstorm.

“...then you know what to do, don’t you,” he murmured, dropping a slow, lingering kiss to the curve of her jaw that nearly made a whine leave her lips (she caught it at the last moment, ashamed of herself for losing her mind over such a small thing as that), and then, with that, backed away entirely, gently freeing her hands from his sweater and, with an appreciative look and a silent wink, turned to stride back to the sliding doors leading back into the house, without another word.

She could only stare, shell shocked and trembling; she couldn’t move an inch, almost like her feet really _were_ frozen to the floor, and only came to her senses when the picture in her grasp fluttered in the wind, reminding her of her presence in the real world as she came crashing back into it with all the grace of a newborn duck.

“Sa- where are you going? Aren’t you going to look at the picture? It’s almost developed,” she called out in a wild rush, holding it aloft and attempting to gain back both her breath and her bearings, and the skeleton monster, casting a cool, uninterested glance at the photo, merely snorted softly and shook his head, gaze moving back to her at the same moment as he slid the glass door open, hand resting on the handle.

“nah. i know what you look like, and my pictures always look the same. ‘sides, i gotta get back to the party before i make a fool of myself. more than usual at least… it’s strangely easy to do, when it comes to you,” he chuckled in self-aware depreciation, raising his bony brows and casting her a meaningful look, and her blush, raging across her cheeks in an instant, was all the answer he needed, his smile soft and teasing.

“don’t stay out here too long, kay? frostbite isn’t the kind of blue i wanna see you in,” he reminded her, nodding at his jacket and shooting her a wink, before sliding the door shut again and stumping off down the hallway, disappearing from sight much too quickly.

Frisk, swaying in the ever more intense wind, stared after him helplessly for a moment, smiling like a loon and clutching the photograph close to her chest, before following after him, stomping the ice off her slip on shoes and locking the door behind her.

The party was still in full swing on the first floor of the large house, the glow of the lights visible against the wall at the end of the hall, but Frisk, after considering rejoining it, let her eyes wander again to the photograph in her hands, slightly wrinkled from their rendezvous and more than a little wind whipped; in the pale glow of the porch light shining from behind her, through the sliding glass doors, the picture was illuminated, though poorly, well enough to see…

And what it had captured was not in the least what she had anticipated.

There he was again, the other skeleton that looked just like Sans but so clearly wasn’t; in the older pictures she had found, he had always borne a ruthless, almost bloodthirsty smirk, bearing sharp fangs, one replaced with gold, a cracked skull, and a gaze not out of place on the face of a predator. In this photo, though, the stranger stood against a backdrop of monochrome ice, alone despite her former presence in the picture, and looked indescribably sad, any trace of a smile completely absent from his damaged face.

He looked… desperate, and in incredible pain. Her heart ached at the sight, even as it soared at the discovery, her own strange absence from the photograph completely forgotten in the face of this breakthrough.

“I _knew_ it. There’s something strange going on with these photos,” she muttered to herself, tracing her finger around the white border of the picture (even his clothes were different, a fur lined, extremely long coat and navy sweater replacing Sans’ typical getup), and bent closer to the picture, squinting her eyes and trying to discern anything from it that she hadn’t already attempted to pry from the others she had found.

It was a complete mystery to her, why no one else had noticed the differences… could only she see them? Were they willfully blind? She had no idea… but she needed to find out. There was something very odd going on here, and she had a feeling it wasn't good, either.

“...who are you…” she wondered aloud to the picture in her grasp, meeting the narrowed, damaged gaze of the other skeleton with single minded determination… until there where a sudden, extremely loud whoop from the party below, and a cork hit the ceiling of the house, bouncing off the landing and rolling down the hallway towards her feet.

She’d nearly jumped out of her shoes, stumbling against one of the walls and clutching at her chest to attempt to calm her racing heart, before she let out a strangled laugh, standing back up and shaking her head. She’d somehow managed to drop her photo in the process, now laying face down on the striped carpet at her feet, and she scooped it up and made to slide it into the pocket of Sans’ coat, intent on enjoying the rest of the holiday evening before focusing on the mystery at hand again.

She glanced at the photo one time before she did so, though, her wonderment over the circumstances behind the oddity rearing, and it was then that she spotted, just over the shoulder of the taciturn monster, something drawn into the ice on the sliding door behind him.

She leaned closer, halting in her tracks once more, before nearly dropping the photograph again, her lips popping open and her eyes widening and her blood running cold in her veins. It was words… two words, the answer to the question she had spoken aloud only moments before:

 _Not him_.

It hadn’t been there before. She was absolutely sure of that, and yet, even as she attempted to steady her breathing, the photo crinkling in her shaking hand, she couldn’t help but doubt herself. Hadn’t it been? The light had been low, beside the sliding door. Where she stood now, closer to the merriment of the party, the light was better, and likely just showed her something she hadn’t seen before.

It was her imagination. It had to be. It was… a picture. It couldn’t _change_.

And yet, despite her own disregard of the happenstance, she hesitated, staring at the words and their curious meaning. Was it possible? Could… there be some way for the monster inside to hear her? There was really only one way to find out, and even though she felt incredibly stupid to be doing it, she whispered again to the photograph, both hands clenched on its border with a rigidity and intensity that was borderline obsessive.

“Can… can you hear me?”

...no response. The person within the picture didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t move a single centimeter; the words on the sliding door remained unchanged. Frisk’s disappointment was palpable, drooping her shoulders and only making her feel incredibly foolish, and with that confirmation, she took another step down the hallway, the light now fully on the photo in her loosened grasp.

And there, it changed, the former phrase now a wiped clean section of glass and below it, carved again in the ice, one single word.

 _Yes_.

Light. It needed light to show the changes. Frisk, casting a look down at the party below (they were having a grand time; no one had missed her yet, that much was clear), immediately darted into the nearest room and shut the door behind her, her back to the door and, with a flick of the switch beside her, the overhead light on full blast.

Yes. **Yes** . He, or someone, at least, could hear her, had answered her twice now; she could barely comprehend what that could mean, what to even do with the information, and could really only stare at the photo in wonder, attempting to formulate a coherent thought, much less another question.

“And… and why… how… I don’t really know where to start. It’s just- so amazing, I can’t believe it! I was right, and… and…” she began in a rush, jumping around in a small circle as she did, before stopping, the phrase that had appeared, scrawled across the entire glass door in the photo, stealing her words from her tongue, her breath from her body, and stilling her heart in her chest.

_**Help us. P L E A S E** _

* * *


End file.
